


coming home

by Areiton



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Adult Peter Parker, Domestic Fluff, Drinking, Established Relationship, Found Family, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Presumed Dead, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 03:30:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18130361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: “They want to plan the funeral,” he says, after a while, and Harley smiles.It’s not a happy smile. It’s the kind of smile he learned from Tony, the kind that is all sharp teeth and threat and it makes Peter shiver.“Tony left plans for that,” he says. “Let them have their spectacle.”Tony Stark Bingo: K4 Presumed Dead





	coming home

There’s a number in his phone he’s never called. 

A number that has never called him. 

He watches the TV, watches the news, and he doesn’t believe it,  _ can’t _ believe it. 

But he reaches for his phone and pulls it up. 

“Peter,” he says, his voice thick and choked. 

He wants to  _ hate _ him, for that. And can’t. Can’t, because he loved Tony before Peter knew him, can’t because Tony loved him. 

“Harley,” he says, and his voice doesn’t sound like him. Sounds distant and strange and  _ empty. _ “You should probably come over.” 

“I’m already on my way.” 

 

~*~

 

Harley came first, is the thing. This sassy snarky brilliant boy that Tony adored. 

Peter  _ hated _ him, the first time they met, hated the way they fell into each other’s orbit, the way Tony smiled at Harley with guilt free eyes, the way they laughed about things Peter didn’t know about. 

Harley didn’t like him either, but he never bothered to explain it. 

Then the War happened and Titan happened and he came back and Harley did, and Harley mattered, mattered in ways that Peter still didn’t  _ like. _

But he was the one in Tony’s bed, and in his labs, and the one at his side at gala’s and press conferences and on the team. 

Harley was brought into SI-- _ he’s brilliant, Pete, he’s gonna be even better than Pepper when he grows into it-- _ and Peter didn’t  _ like _ it, but they’d all lost too much for him to fight it. 

Tony deserved all the family he could find. 

They could hate each other, and fake it, for the man they both loved. 

 

~*~

 

Harley walks in the way he always has--like he belongs here. Even if the penthouse is Peter’s and Tony’s--he always acted liked it was his home too. 

Maybe because Tony always treated him like the son he didn’t have. 

Maybe the reason Peter has never liked him. 

He walks in and takes a look at Peter, curled on the couch in Tony’s favorite sweatshirt and a big blanket, and eyes glassy. “You,” he says, “need a drink.” 

 

~*~

 

Harley pours him shitty vodka on ice because he can’t handle tequila--it’s the last thing he drank with Tony, the night before he left, mango margaritas that were tangy and sweet on his tongue and he could taste the bite of tequila on Tony’s mouth, after, when he rode him slow and easy in their big bed. 

He drinks his vodka and watches the news, watches it scroll along the bottom, tears dripping slow down his cheeks and vodka cold in his belly. 

He wonders if he’ll ever be warm, or if this is how life will be now. 

“It’s not true,” he says, hours or minutes or days later. 

Harley is close by, close enough that he feels the words brush against his skin, when he hears them, soft whispered, “I know it’s not.”

 

~*~

 

True or not--the news is there, and the wreckage, and the world has been through too much--SI has been--to not address it.

“We have to call a press conference,” Harley says, when dawn starts creeping over the horizon. 

The vodka is almost gone, and his head is pleasantly fuzzy, but the grief looms hot and large and crushing. 

“Peter,” he says, sharply and Peter shrugs. Curls into his blankets. 

“I don’t care, Harley. It’s not true.” 

Harley crouches in front of him, green eyes hard and determined and red-rimmed. “We have to take care of SI, Peter. Until he comes home, we have to.” 

“He’s coming home,” Peter says, and Harley s eyes glint with tears, his mouth trembles, and it hits Peter suddenly--Harley is taking care of him, but he’s breaking too. This is just as hard for him, if for different reasons. 

And as much as Peter dislikes Harley, as much as he doesn’t  _ want  _ to take care of him--

He sits up, let’s Harley pull him to his feet. “What do you need me to do?” he asks, his voice raspy and eyes burning. 

 

~*~

 

They hold a press conference. 

It’s as horrible as Peter expects, and after, he turns off their phones and orders FRIDAY to leave them undisturbed and lets Harley get very,  _ very _ drunk. 

“They want to plan the funeral,” he says, after a while, and Harley smiles. 

It’s not a happy smile. It’s the kind of smile he learned from Tony, the kind that is all sharp teeth and threat and it makes Peter shiver. 

“Tony left plans for that,” he says. “Let them have their spectacle.” 

Peter shivers and Harley sighs, sitting next to him, and draping himself behind the younger man. It feels  _ strange _ to have someone besides Tony wrapped around him, but it feels right, too--because no one in the world loved Tony the way did, no one understood them and the strange found family the way they could. Rhodey would try, if he were here instead of combing the south Pacific, but he was different, was closer to an equal. 

Harley and Peter--they weren’t. They were  _ kids _ that captivated Tony, and most days, Peter still didn’t know why. 

“Did I tell you about the time Tony came to came to my science fair?” Harley murmurs, and Peter smiles. 

 

~*~

 

It's hell. And as the word spreads, as people gather for the funeral, it gets, impossibly, worse. 

The first time, Tony was missing for three months before he rose from the dead. 

The second, it was six.

Peter hopes like hell it's less than that, this time. 

 

~*~

 

After the funeral, he expects Harley to go home.

He has a life, a pretty wife and a dog, a corporation to run and he tolerates Peter at best. 

But he doesn’t. He makes some calls, and Laura comes to the tower, settles into Harley's room, and it's...strange. 

But not bad. 

Once he looks at Harley, a night he doesn't get drunk, and asks, “Why are you still here?” 

Harley shrugs. “We're family, Parker. He made us family. And family does this kind of shit together.” 

 

~*~

 

A month after the Stark jet crashed into the south Pacific with Tony Stark and CEO Pepper Potts, the board meets to read the will.

Peter is there. So is Harley. They’re indisputably the future of SI, the heirs Tony had selected and both he and Pepper had groomed, and it had always seemed amusing and also like a distant nightmare, something he knew he’d have to deal with one day—but not now. Not any time soon.

He knew loving Tony, being with him, meant he’d lose Tony long before he was ready. It was a worry that loomed for the older man, and once, when Peter proposed, he’d said something about it.

He’d never let himself care.

He’d always looked at Tony and seen something eternal. Something that  _ couldn’t _ die.

But it’s been a  _ month _ and even Rhodey called. He got drunk, blackout drunk and sobbed himself to sleep in his big empty bed, and woke up held to Harley’s chest.

_ He can’t come back from this, kid. There’s nothing—there’s nothing to come back from. _

“He’s coming home,” Peter whispered into Harley’s shirt, a childlike belief wearing thin, and Harley nodded against his hair, stubble tugging just a little.

Rhodey kept looking, and they—they kept doing what they had to.

And if he felt like he was drowning, well. Harley and Laura held him up during the worst of it.

But he stands next to Harley in the elevator, and he sees the other man’s hands tremble and he says, “You’re doing great.”

He says, “He would be so proud of you, Harls.”

He says, “I’m glad it’s you.”

Harley gives him a weak, watery smile, and he squeezes Peter’s shoulder once as the elevator slows. “He’s coming home.”

It feels like a call and refrain, like a chant that if they pray often enough, it might be true. Peter nods, and something tight and broken in Harley’s eyes eases, just a little, before he steps off the elevator.

 

~*~

 

They’re named his heirs. Oh, there is the money set aside for the September Foundation, for the Avengers and their mission, for the arts that Pepper loved so much—but that is a pittance, in the grand scheme of things. Peter and Harley are named the sole benefactors, with controlling interest of SI and all the rights and responsibilities that come with it. There’s more—the houses and cars and patents and so much more that Peter’s head spins with it—but it comes down to this: Tony Stark gave everything to him. A poor boy from Queens. And Harley. A poor boy from Tennessee.

After.

After—they go back to the penthouse, and Peter sits on the counter, his wrists itchy for the pressure of his webslingers and skin crawling with the urge to fly through the air.

“He left the suits to you,” Harley murmurs.

Peter looks at him.

Even now, all these years later, Spiderman remains a mystery, a well kept secret. But Harley isn’t the public or even the SI board. He’s one of Tony’s, someone the man loved, trusted. And he’s watching Peter, eyes patient and curious.

“Come on,” he says. “Lemme show you.”

 

~*~

 

“I hated you,” Harley says. It’s one of the days that are bad, one of the days Peter wakes up and can’t breathe through the crushing grief, can’t see through his tears. One of the days he curls in Tony’s old tshirt and hides from the world that wants so much from him, the world that would eat him whole.

It’s one of Harley’s bad days too, when he goes quiet and brooding, when he is withdrawn and reclusive, and Peter aches for him to reach out and  _ comfort _ .

They don’t usually have bad days together.

Usually it works that Peter can grieve and Harley can coax him out of the worst of it, and Peter can do the same to Harley. On days like this, though—the grief is so pervasive and thick and isolating, he wonders if he’ll ever be free of it.

“I know,” Peter says.

“I saw you at his side on the TV and I felt like I’d been forgotten, left behind like when my Dad left us. I  _ hated _ you for that.”

“I hated you,” Peter says, and Harley nods.

He fingers the suit that’s tossed on the end of Tony and Peter’s bed, the one he’d been unsurprised but quietly pleased to see. “I’m glad he had you. I can’t—this isn’t something I could share with him. I’m glad you could.”

Peter stares at him, and grasps for his hand.

 

~*~

 

Some days, he looks out the windows of the penthouse, searches the sky for a suit he doesn’t see and he thinks—maybe they were all right.

Maybe they  _ won’t _ see Ironman in the skies over New York again.

Maybe—

“He’s coming home,” Harley says, softly and firmly and Peter swallows, convulsively, turns to curl in Harley’s comforting embrace.

It’s been five months.

“I know,” he whispers, and it tastes like a lie.

 

~*~

 

“I’m coming back,” Rhodey says. It’s been six months and Peter wants to hate him for that—but he can’t.

It’s been six months and the wreckage is gone, and Tony is gone.

Sometimes—sometimes Peter wonders if this is how Tony had felt, when Peter died, if the desperate clawing grief is what made him fight so hard to survive and even harder to undo everything Thanos had done.

He wishes he had asked.

 

~*~

 

Laura finds the recipe book. She digs it out and drags Peter and Harley into the kitchen, and they spend a messy night cooking chicken gnocchi and drinking cheap white wine and Peter laughs.

It hurts, later, when he’s in bed and Harley creeps in, curls around him and holds him, grounding as he sobs.

“It’s not  _ fair,” _ he gasps. What right does he have to laugh, when Tony is dead? To be happy when the whole reason he exists is  _ gone. _

“None of this is fair,” Harley says.

 

~*~

 

Laura shyly announces that she’s pregnant the night they try to recreate eggplant Parmesan, and Harley stares at her, slack jawed and Peter smiles and it  _ hurts _ , but he thinks—this is what Tony would have wanted.

He would have been so happy, so fucking  _ proud _ of Harley.

He should  _ be _ here.

 

~*~

 

Eight months tick by and Peter holds on to the words, the quiet promise.

_ He’s coming home. _

“Do you still believe it?” he asks Harley one night while they’re going over more endless paperwork that seems to keep SI running.

Harley glances at him. “When I met Tony, he was dragging a defunct suit and had been declared dead and managed to survive attacks from genetically manipulated people who were  _ on fire. _ ”

Peter stares at him and Harley smiles gently. “I think it will take a helluva a lot more than a plane crash to keep Tony Stark from coming back to you, Peter.”

Peter looks away, tears burning in his eyes.

“He’d never miss the birth of your baby,” he whispers and Harley grins.

They sign a few more papers, and then, “Hey.”

Peter looks up, and Harley says, softly, a secret prayer. “He’s coming home.”

Peter nods. “He’s coming home.”

 

~*~

 

They make meatloaf on a quiet Thursday. Laura is sleeping on the couch and Harley is laughing at Peter’s story about the lab when a voice cuts through the room.

“If I’d known dying would get you two to get along, I’d have done it years ago.”

Peter drops the glass he’s holding.

Harley is grinning, his eyes shinning, staring past Peter like he’s seen a miracle.

Tony looks—he looks like hell, sunburnt and beat to hell and Pepper is clinging to him, red and too thin and shaking, and there’s a smile on her split chapped lips, and they’re—

They’re here.

They’re alive.

Pepper nudges Tony and it breaks the moment, and Peter throws himself into Tony’s open arms.

His arms come around him, tight enough Peter can’t breathe, and it’s ok, it’s perfect, it’s perfect.

Tony is home.

Tony is alive and here and Harley is laughing, disbelief and relief in his voice.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Tony murmurs, and Peter draws back to kiss him, silencing the apology before it can turn into anything more. It’s gentle, mindful of Tony’s raw skin, fingers flitting anxious and eager over his jaw and down his sides, and Tony groans into it, drags him close and licks into his mouth.

It’s perfect. Dry and gritty with salt and sand and perfect.

He pulls back abruptly, remembering and almost shoves Tony at Harley.

“You look good, Pops,” Harley says, accepting the too tight, desperate hug, clinging back just as hard.

“You look like you moved in, Junior.”

“Someone needed to look after your boy toy,” Harley says, lightly.

There are questions. There’s a story here, and a mountain of paperwork to deal with, a media circus that is already giving Peter a headache, a thousands things that will need to be done. But that’s tomorrow. For now.

“Rhodey is bringing Bruce and Dr. Cho,” Peter says, and Harley nods, eyeing Tony and Pepper.

“FRIDAY, order—” he pauses, and glances at Tony, questioningly.

“A burger,” Pepper says, firmly and it strings a smile across Tony’s lips.

“Burgers,” Harley finishes, smiling, and Peter let’s go of the worries as Tony tugs him onto his lap, curling together on the couch.

There are a million things to think about, later, later, tomorrow.

For now, there is this. A boy who has somehow become his best friend, and the man he loves more than life, both exactly where they belong, and Peter tucked against Tony.

He catches Harley’s eyes and mouths the words.  _  He came home. _

 


End file.
